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COVER STORY: TEHELKA
RAKESH KUMAR JAIN
Gasbag Man
Meet Rakesh Kumar
Jain. He is the Samata Party's alleged suitcase man who provided some
of the Tehelka drama's juiciest dialogues, talking nonchalantly about
a long list of defence deals. Yet today he denies, equally rashly, every
single line. It is bizarre, considering Jain is on spycam bragging about
his hotline to George Fernandes, his enormous commissions, his contributions
to the party's kitty, and, of course, how he once made the chairman of
MIG sweat by insisting on a 10 per cent cut on a Rs 3,600 crore deal "in
which the prime minister would be involved".
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FLOWERY SPEECH: To the Tehelka
investigators Jain was a goldmine of information on cutting deals |
At his Akash Deep office in Delhi's Connaught
Place last week, Jain, 47, captain of the Pashupati Acrylon group, wasn't
even feigning repentance for his deeds. On the contrary he issued a string
of blatant denials against Tehelka. Short of stating that his head was
transplanted on someone else's shoulders in the tape, that the voice which
emanated from his mouth was a creation of some brilliant sound engineer
and not his own vocal chords ("I was talking about a hospital project,
they edited it to suit their defence story"), Jain tried to defend
himself with statements bordering on the ludicrous. The Denial Master
said that the tapes were doctored craftily, edited and composed to suit
an "evil force" out to destabilise the Vajpayee Government.
That the journalists who masqueraded as arms agents were props for an
opposition without issues. For Jain everything in the tapes was false
and that included his famous contacts, even his voice.
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R.K GUPTA
RSS worker-turned-middle-man, tells Tehelka he can outsmart even the
PMO |
H.C. PANT
Deputy secretary in the Defence Ministry; he was the crucial link
generals |
His calling card, handed over to INDIA TODAY,
stated that he was the national treasurer of the Samata Party. But then
that was just a calling card. A few minutes across the table and it became
evident that straight talk and Jain did not have a happy coexistence.
Sample what he told this correspondent, "I don't think you can call
me a national treasurer, even though I continue to be one." If that
isn't enough to confuse you, try this one: "The newspapers say I've
resigned, my party president hasn't accepted my resignation though. I,
however, did resign, but actually no one's conveyed to me anything officially
about accepting it. So I am the national treasurer of the party."
And so we take him back to his deals. Is it
all true, about the cuts in the MIG deal, about how he helped Sagem, the
French firm, to bag an order against heavy odds, how he clinched a Rs
560-crore deal for supply of Barak missiles from Israel's Rafael. "No,
everything is false. I never said anything like that." We press further.
Did Fernandes ask him to contribute Rs 2.5 lakh to the party fund? And
did he eventually contribute Rs 50 crore to the party coffers, culled
from defence deals? Did he go to Moscow to negotiate MIG kickbacks? He
denies everything. He accepts having gone to Russia, but only "to
talk to certain wool suppliers".
You realise this much. He wasn't serious about
helping West End-much of what he said was balderdash. He had a habit of
blending half-truths with fiction.
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